


perchance to dream

by tansypool



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Post-Library, doctor/yaz remains one-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-08-28 04:18:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16716478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tansypool/pseuds/tansypool
Summary: The Doctor doesn't sleep much, and the TARDIS sometimes knows better than her occupants.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A follow-on of sorts from [Hindsight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16365653). It's a prologue of sorts, not entirely necessary to read, but it'll help.
> 
> Many thanks to [Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kateandtheuniverse/pseuds/kateandtheuniverse) for her betaing.

The Doctor doesn’t sleep much.

A few hours is plenty, most nights; her friends have never known her to sleep on a regular basis, as she will stay awake after they fall asleep, and wake up before they do. Graham had seemed surprised when she mentioned her bedroom in passing one day – never mind that Yaz had already figured out its existence, and would come knocking with cups of tea on the nights she couldn’t sleep, or didn’t want to.

The Doctor doesn’t sleep much, but when she does, the images in her head make her wish that she didn’t have to sleep at all. Flashes of a war that she fought to forget, of friends and foes alike, blurred into the chaos behind them. Faces that should not have been there, alongside the faces that were. And it tumbles along, with neither rhyme nor reason, only an inescapable, overwhelming dread. Other times, it is not the war, but the images of people from long ago, be it months or millennia, that sting just as much. And there are so many faces, all bringing pain anew.

She remembers the dreams, sometimes. Other times, she wakes up with nothing but lingering unsettlement, which she tries to shake off before the rest of her team wakes up. While this particular personality lends itself towards optimism, there are parts of her that have remained since her first face, and which she knows will stay until her last. She cannot shake them, so instead, she hides them, as she has always tried to. In her waking hours, she’s happier than she has been for a while; the façade is not as hard to maintain as it has been in the past. Still, she fears its breaking point, and with the images she can’t block from her mind, it feels as though that point may come sooner rather than later.

When the dreams come thick and fast, the Doctor starts to avoid sleeping at all. Her companions will sleep; she’ll tinker with the console, which does have the bonus effect of giving them slightly more accurate landings, or she’ll dig through the library, looking for something to help, or at least a distraction. The purple sofa that appeared in a dark corner one evening is at least comfortable to lie down on.

It strikes her one night – tossing and turning, blankets thrown asunder – that she hasn’t slept soundly since Darillium, and the feeling manifests like a rock in her stomach, making her almost ill with grief, and with longing. How many years has it been? Too many to count, of unsettled nights, of her only escape from the dreams being the days that were worse as often as they were not. A part of her had once naïvely hoped that the sleepless nights would be left behind with her old body, but of course they’d persisted.

And with thoughts of Darillium come other thoughts unbidden and unavoidable. Of River, young and wild; of River, on Darillium, trying not to read into the tears in her husband’s eyes.

They had lived, and loved, and the Doctor’s time with River was through. She’d been left to wither away as a ghost in an abandoned computer. Once upon a time, Donna had talked about what she’d seen in the Library, of a world within a computer that just wasn’t quite right. But it was fixed, it was stable, and a way to live on had seemed like the kindest option for River. In theory, in a desperate, last-second attempt to save her life, it was with the thought that she would be alongside friends, and able to survive, and be happy.

But they had a life together, and she’d never mentioned Lux, or a Dave, or anybody she’d been on the trip to the Library with – they were colleagues, nothing more. Her past self had abandoned them there, too unaware of what was to come, too panicked to find a better solution.

Not that there was one, and no new lifetime had offered a new perspective.

So she lays there, images and guilt swirling around her, and she hopes for the sleep that she knows won’t come.

\---

The shutter of brakes, a smooth enough landing that everybody stays on their feet, and the Doctor lets the TARDIS materialise with a grin, which she hopes doesn’t look as manic as her exhaustion is making her feel.

“First permanent settlement on Ganymede, 41st century!” She says it triumphantly, but realises her error as soon as the words are out of her mouth. The screens around the console are as helpful as they ever are, giving nothing away except for the fact that this is not where they were supposed to be. “Wait, no, never mind that…”

An experimental spin of the hourglass, the press of a few dials and buttons, and nothing happens, except for the appearance of a Hobnob. The TARDIS has decided where they’re visiting today, and is also rushing them out the door. It’s a change of pace – she’s been otherwise very accurate of late.

“Change of plans. Not the first settlement on Ganymede, take a rain check on that.”

“So we’re not doing Jupiter?” Ryan had suggested it, but the moon had been a slightly more stable option to land on.

The Doctor is already heading for the door, walking backwards instead of breaking eye contact and silently hoping she doesn’t fall on a step. (She hasn’t done that in front of them – yet.) “We’ll get there, just after we find out what’s going on out here.” She gestures at the door, then spins on one foot and reaches for her jacket, giving her team a few seconds to catch up.

“Do you even know where we are?” Yaz makes an effort to sound concerned, but she’s already right behind the Doctor, whereas Ryan and Graham are still at the console, Graham splitting the Hobnob in half.

“I will once we’re out the door,” the Doctor says, before yelling across to where Ryan and Graham are still standing, “Come on, chop chop!”

She gives them half a second more to catch up before she steps out the door, and stops short. Feels the air escape her lungs, and can’t bring herself to breathe in again.

There’s a man, in a suit, holding a clipboard, asking questions that she can’t quite hear, having walked in after she doesn’t know how long. Instead, her mind is scrambling for images from centuries ago – of an intricate computer, matching the one in front of her. A screen, right behind the man, but it wasn’t cracked the last time she was here.

It is a prolonged and painful few seconds as it sinks in: she watched her wife die here.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love perspective hopping between chapters.

The TARDIS door slams behind them as the Doctor stops, suddenly still, barely even breathing.

Yaz wants to jump forward – it’s clearly not a viewing suite on a moon, but the Doctor still seems to know where they are. Not that she says anything to clear it up for the rest of them. There’s a cracked screen, and something that looks like a seat, with thick wires scattered around it. A pole on the wall has a broken pair of handcuffs attached to it.

And there’s a man, pale and half bald and wearing a suit, looking more confused than angry, having rushed in at the sound of the TARDIS. So there’s no easy way into this room, then.

“Who are you, and what are you doing down here?”

The Doctor is still in a daze, and Yaz can’t stop herself from launching in, trying to hedge until the Doctor can provide a better explanation. “Our ship took us here, who are you?”

“Rothman Lux, of the Felman Lux Corporation.”

On hearing the names, the Doctor shakes her head a little, as if to clear it, or to steel herself for what’s to come. Back to her normal self, constantly on the move rather than her brief, eerie standstill a moment before – well, as normal as the Doctor can ever seem. She brandishes the psychic paper in the man’s face, far too quickly for anybody to read it, and announces herself: “We’re on the recovery team.” No names given – as likely to be something she just forgot as it is to be by design. Yaz is used to following the Doctor’s lead on that matter, waiting to find out how much of a disguise they’ll be putting on despite looking completely out of place, as often as not.

“We don’t have a recovery team coming.” The man narrows his eyes, and taps at his clipboard. “Everything and everyone is organised through me.”

“Well, we’re here now.” And with that, the Doctor steps closer – Rothman Lux backs away from her slightly, clearly intimidated, despite her being eye level with his chin. She doesn’t make any attempt to alarm him, though, and just smirks a little at his reaction. “So, what are we here to recover?”

\---

They leave the TARDIS where it landed, and follow the man up a flight of stairs as he talks, clearly too shocked by their arrival to question it any more. The Doctor is making sense of it, asking questions, prodding for details when they aren’t volunteered. It’s the 52nd century, and they’re in the centre of a planet – beyond that, Yaz can’t even begin to fathom what’s happening, and her focus slips to the sound of Ryan and Graham debating what’s going on, and Graham complaining about the effect of the stairs on his knees. As they ascend, the stairway becomes more brightly lit, until they enter a room that is entirely white, which takes the fluorescent lights from bright to nearly blinding.

There are three people in there already, all looking as startled as Rothman Lux did upon seeing them. One of them is bright blue, Yaz notices with a jolt – but his face is smooth and mercifully free of teeth, and his eyes resemble that of a cat, obscured behind half-moon spectacles.

A woman with locs in a neat plait is the first to question their appearance – “Lux, where the hell did these people come from?”

“They said their ship took them to the main computer room, and that’s where I found them. Alongside their ship, some ridiculous blue box.”

Yaz sees the Doctor frown at the description, but she doesn’t get a chance to protest when Lux continues talking. “They’re— you never said who you are.”

The slight against the TARDIS ignored, the Doctor insistently says, “I told you, we’re the recovery team.”

“That doesn’t tell me a blasted thing about who you are!” His confusion forgotten, Lux snaps at the Doctor, and in his defence, the Doctor hasn’t actually introduced herself, or anybody else.

Yaz sees the slightest eye roll from the Doctor, and just hopes that Lux didn’t catch it.

“Like my identification said—” The Doctor brandishes the wallet with the psychic paper inside again, but doesn’t even open the wallet— “We’re the recovery team. This is Ryan, Graham, and Yaz, and I’m— Jane Smith. Doctor Jane Smith.”

The rest of them are allowed to be themselves, but the Doctor is definitely hiding who she is, for a reason that she has yet to share.

Lux just rolls his eyes, though he then introduces his own team, pointing at them as he says their names. “Sophie, she’s my deputy; Carver, he’s the tech expert; and Charlie, they’re the specialist on the history of this particular computer system.”

Sophie, the woman with the braid, briefly nods as her name is said. Carver turns out to be the one with blue skin and glasses, and he smiles broadly, and gives them a wave. Charlie, a person with close-cropped blonde hair and a long face, pops up from behind a stack of boxes at the mention of their name – and then back behind them again, without saying a word. The Doctor had startled at Charlie’s name, but having seen their face, had relaxed again, slightly.

Lux looks back from his team to the Doctor’s. “What do you do, then?”

The Doctor doesn’t give them a chance to answer for themselves – though Yaz doubts that _I can deal with parking disputes and mostly avoid escalating the situation_ is much help. “Ryan’s good with machines, Graham is great for remembering details, and Yaz can, well, do a bit of everything, really.”

Yaz tries not to think about the glowing inside of her chest, and tries to look more confident than she feels. Ryan just looks panicked. Lux looks at them all, his eyes narrowed, and nods slowly.

“So what is actually happening here, and what do you need us to do?” Graham pipes up.

Lux’s eyes narrow even more. “Didn’t I tell you that on the stairs?”

“I’ve got old man ears.”

Lux starts with a harassed sigh, but he at least has the grace to explain. Out of the corner of her eye, Yaz sees the Doctor wander over to the boxes where Charlie is sitting, and crouch down to speak to them, but she can’t hear what’s being said, especially when she’s trying to focus on Lux’s words too.

“Eighty years back, we had most of an archaeological team disappear here, and four thousand people who’d been missing for a century all turned up at once.”

“Four thousand and twenty-two,” Sophie interjects.

Lux continues. “Four thousand and twenty-two. Except none of them could tell us how they got there, only that they’d been in some virtual reality for anywhere from a week to fifty years. There were only a few witnesses there before they all appeared – and my grandfather was the only one who stuck around.”

“What do you mean, stuck around?” Yaz has a sneaking suspicion that she doesn’t want to voice.

“There’s a record of a man called the Doctor, but not much else besides that. He and a woman we don’t even have the name of appeared out of nowhere, then were granted far too much authority by one of the party members, and then they both disappeared before either of them actually told us what went on in there. We don’t even know how they got here or how they left.”

Yaz’s mind drifts to the mystery woman, but she’s glad that Ryan’s didn’t, when he asks, “So how do we know that we’re safe here now?”

“We’ve been working on safety protocols since my grandfather’s expedition here. Not that he particularly cared, but he was the only member of the party to survive. Said something about the Vashta Nerada and avoiding the shadows, and never spoke about it again.”

“And that was eighty years ago?” Graham asks.

Lux nods.

“And you’ve been working on it that entire time?” Graham asks again. Yaz feels a little guilty at not asking the questions – she’s the one who should know what to ask, she’s the one making a career out of unfamiliar situations. But instead she finds herself dwelling on passing comments.

“Four thousand and twenty-two people turned up a century after they went missing, but an entire archaeological expedition died. Of course we’ve been trying to figure out how to get back in. It’s just taken that long to be sure we’ll be safe.”

Yaz finally comes to her senses, enough to actually ask something, to look like she’s part of a recovery team, rather than a stowaway to a time traveller. “Why do you want to come back here so much, if you know that the archaeological team died?”

“We don’t know what happened to kill them, and there might be something here that’ll help. My grandfather was the only person who came out of it alive besides this Doctor he kept going on about. Given my grandfather is the only one who stuck around, his word is all we’ve got to go off, and we can’t exactly ask him. But it’s my family’s corporation, and my family’s library, so it’s our responsibility to find out what happened.”

It is incredibly clear to Yaz that Lux is hiding something else, but she doesn’t press the issue. She doesn’t get a chance to, either, as the Doctor pops up from behind the boxes, holding a couple of sheets of paper with photos on them – photos of five faces, a short paragraph underneath each of them. She notices Yaz’s gaze, and accidentally catches her eye, before glancing away as she folds the paper in half and stuffs it into a pocket.

And then the Doctor looks at the actual recovery team, almost accusingly. “How did you get in here, if it’s not safe on the planet?”

They all hold up their hands, showing what Yaz had assumed to be watches on their wrists. “Spatial manipulators,” says Charlie, “They were the only way to bypass the surface of the planet.”

The Doctor nods approvingly, and steps around Carver’s desk to look at his work. She asks him something about the recovery process, and then pulls out her sonic – his eyes widen, and he lowers his glasses to look at it more closely, though she doesn’t let him hold it. He gestures at a door, and she nods, her expression becoming very determined.

Lux looks straight at the rest of them. “You said you’re the recovery team, are you here to help with the recovery, or are you just going to stand there?”

\---

The Doctor had announced them all as members of a recovery team, and given them precisely nothing to go on from there, beyond the skills she thought they had. Yaz had then volunteered them as jacks-of-all-trades, doing whatever needed doing to free up the experts to make themselves useful. As it turns out, for the majority of the time, this meant one of two things: going through multiple centuries’ worth of paperwork about the Library, and making endless cups of tea. Three thousand years in the future and made with leaves grown in another galaxy, and it still tastes like Yorkshire Gold.

Graham’s apparent eye for details had given him no choice in being immediately snatched away by Charlie, which he looked pleased by until he realised that the boxes of the boring paperwork were now his responsibility. Ryan’s eye for machinery wasn’t of much use with technology three thousand years ahead of his expertise, so he wound up next to Graham, working through a different box of equally dull paperwork, having given up begging to at least help sort out screws or something else vaguely mechanical. Yaz finds herself alternating duties – going through a box containing financial information from the building of the library, and making cups of tea when the numbers start to make her eyes go blurry. Ryan offers to take turns, but Yaz likes the momentary distraction.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has taken it upon herself to do the lion’s share of the repair work, which Yaz only knows from following the Doctor and Carver out of sheer curiosity. Through a door – which she props open with a chair – there is a winding corridor, and then a room that is as brightly lit as every other, with the same white walls, though this one is slightly less crowded. There’s a platform at one end, with a desk next to it, and a few benches. In addition, there’s a folded-up camp bed in the corner, which looks untouched – the camp beds in the main room all look distinctly used, as though they’ve been folded and unfolded a thousand times.

The Doctor briefly examines the room, then tears the bottom from one of the sheets of paper she took from Charlie earlier, and leans it against the wall, so as to write down a list. She then sets a bemused Carver off with the list – “Oh, add to that, three welding torches, and a cooked chicken, if you’ve got a spare?” – and slowly walks around the perimeter of the room, examining everything, but touching nothing.

As soon as Carver comes back with the haphazard pile, Yaz sees the Doctor eying a shadow underneath a bench suspiciously – she throws a piece of chicken at it, watches it land, waits, and turns back to the pile of machinery that she was examining. Yaz had thought it odd – she has yet to see the Doctor eat something that wasn’t predominantly sugar – but this did nothing to help with the clarity.

With nothing to do except begin on the boxes, Yaz watches the Doctor crouch down next to a pile of wires on the floor, with her face quite close.

“I’ll see you ‘round, yeah?” Yaz says, trying not to sound too keen.

The Doctor doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even look up from the wires. Yaz tries not to dwell on it.

\---

Two days of paperwork made up of predominantly numbers, looking for a discrepancy that Charlie thinks they might have missed. Their specialisation is in the history of the library itself – the Library, as they and the paperwork insist – and not in the finer details of the finances of its inception.

Despite being the 52nd century, they still run on 24-hour time, but their only indication of the evenings is that of the clocks – they don’t even dim the lights when they sleep, instead using masks. Charlie had mentioned dangers in the dark when Yaz asked, but didn’t have any more detail to offer – or any that they were willing to offer, anyway. It is the slowing down of their reading and the frequent glances at clocks that are indicative of the second full day in the Library’s core drawing to a close.

However, despite two full days spent mostly in one room, Yaz hasn’t seen the Doctor leave the other room – she’s not sure how she could have missed it, unless the Doctor was very intentionally waiting until everybody else was asleep. There are a few camp beds that they set up each night and fold away each morning, kept in a third room that branches off from a corner, alongside the kettle, the food, and the poky little cupboard that happens to also be the bathroom.

Yaz takes it upon herself to check on the Doctor – Lux’s team don’t seem particularly alarmed, but Ryan and Graham are both wary of interrupting her when she’s been behaving so strangely since their arrival.

She neatens the stack of papers she’s been reading, leaving it ready for the next morning with an order from a foundry that spans seventeen pages. She stands up, and stretches her back – she hears a few joints pop as she does. It must be late, as nobody seems to notice the sudden movement; Graham seems to be falling asleep in his seat.

As she walks into the room, she notices how much it has transformed since she was last in there – there are wires scattered across the floor, some haphazardly, others in small piles. The desk has been flipped on its side, and the platform is missing its top, which is instead propped up against the wall. However, the camp bed is still where it was on the first day, untouched.

The Doctor’s jacket hasn’t been touched, either – it’s still in a pile by the door, and Yaz can’t quite stop herself from picking it up to fold it. Her hand brushes over the pocket where she knows the Doctor had stowed the pages of paperwork, and finds nothing; she folds it up neatly, places it back where she found it, and then she sees that the Doctor hasn’t noticed the sounds of footsteps, of fabric against fabric.

Yaz wanders carefully through the detritus, and sits near enough to watch the Doctor, with her arms wrapped around her knees, but she doesn’t say anything, not wanting to startle her.

She’s seen the Doctor angry, and mournful, and ecstatic, but never once so focused as this. She’s staring intently at what looks like the 51st century version of a motherboard in the centre of the opened platform, holding a few wires in one hand, and a handful of small screws with the other. She’s sat with one leg sprawled flat against the floor, and the other tucked in on itself, as she hunches over her work.

Yaz sees that her sonic is on the other side of the room, amidst a pile of spare wires and tools, but the Doctor doesn’t notice until she puts the wires down to fumble for it, and finds only the empty floor, blindly patting at the tiles while staring at the motherboard. Yaz unfolds herself, and tries to move across the floor without disturbing anything – she’s surprised when she succeeds, and places the sonic in the Doctor’s hand.

It’s only at the touch of Yaz’s hand that the Doctor notices she is no longer alone.

“Are you okay?” It feels empty, as though she’s asking very little, despite so much going on.

But the Doctor doesn’t say anything – she all but squeaks a soft _Mmhmm_ and nods, just a little too quickly, before leaning back over the platform, all but shutting Yaz out of the conversation that hadn’t had a chance to start.

\---

On the evening of the third day, Yaz is beginning to feel as though seeing anything outside of the room again is naught but a dream. She also feels as though the paperwork is merely busy work, keeping them out of the way of the recovery team who were actually hired, as they’ve found nothing of worth, or even of interest.

Suddenly, with no announcement of his plans, Carver leaves his desk, and spends all of two minutes in the room with the Doctor. When he returns, the conversation between him, Lux, and Sophie is murmured – but in the otherwise near silence, most of them are. Yaz catches a few words. _Nearly complete_ , from Carver; _trial run_ , from Sophie.

So Yaz decides to check in on the Doctor again – she’s usually scarily self-sufficient, but the fact that she hasn’t seen her leave the room is still more than a little alarming to Yaz, and she can’t stop herself.

But first, she boils the kettle, and digs for something sugar-based. She’s worried that the Doctor probably isn’t eating – and ignores the fact that she barely is, either. She’s grown used to the persistent nerves unsettling her stomach, which double every time her mind drifts to the Doctor. She’s ignoring that for now, too.

With incredibly strong tea in one hand and a packet of what she assumes are biscuits in the other, Yaz walks through to the Doctor, trying to keep her footsteps quiet.

The Doctor is curled against a wall, staring blankly at her sonic, muttering under her breath. There’s a remote next to her, in a few pieces – but the floor is otherwise clear, the desk in its place, the platform intact. The Doctor notices Yaz’s footsteps, this time, and glances up, but doesn’t say a word.

“Thought this might help,” Yaz whispers, handing the Doctor the cup of tea as she tries not to disturb the peace too much.

She sits next to the Doctor, not quite close enough to be touching, just enough to be near, though she’s unsure if it’s for the Doctor’s benefit or her own. The Doctor is yet to do anything with the tea beyond warm her hands on it, so Yaz places the biscuits in front of her, not wanting to press the issue.

But then her head droops against Yaz’s shoulder, and her whole posture begin to relax. Yaz grabs the tea from her hands before she drops it, places it on the floor, and readjusts, just enough so that it’s a little less of a distance for her to lean.

Yaz tries to swallow the nerves, tries to keep her heartbeat under control. It’s easier said than done – she’s closer than she ever gets to the Doctor, can’t ignore the inescapable scent of her – the inexplicable scent of Earl Grey, mingled with something that might be engine oil. She shouldn’t like it as much as she does.

They stay there, the Doctor leaning into Yaz’s shoulder, for what doesn’t feel nearly long enough. Yaz is starting to drift too, when she feels the Doctor startle, and sit bolt upright.

“Sorry, Yaz, didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. Haven’t been out too long, have I?”

“No, you’re— you’re fine. It’s fine.” Yaz reaches for the cup of tea, passes it to the Doctor, ignores the jolt at the brush of her fingers.

The tea is still hot.

And with a quiet “thank you” as the Doctor holds up the cup of tea, Yaz knows the moment is over. She leaves the Doctor alone, examining the fragments next to her, but she does at least see her blow on the tea and take a small sip before she leaves.

\---

Yaz returns to the main room to find Sophie and Carver in deep discussion.

“I’ve checked – the platform is ready, the system is as stable as it’ll ever get. We need to do this as soon as possible.” Carver is wildly gesticulating – at his own work, at the room Yaz has just left.

“Lux is refusing to go ahead with it if the system isn’t actually stable.” Sophie doesn’t seem convinced of something – Yaz hopes that it’s Lux’s hesitation. It could be that Sophie believes him paranoid, but Yaz suspects that it’s a hope that they’ll leave soon.

“There’s no way to stabilise the system. It’s going to break down sooner or later, and it’ll never be in the state it was when they closed down the Library. We get them out, or they’re gone.”

“So we’re doing this now, then?”

“Soon. Dr Smith’s nearly done, the simulations are all working, this is as good as it’s going to get.”

Sophie takes a deep, determined breath. “I’ll tell him. He’ll probably actually listen.”

Yaz realises she’s still standing where she stopped – watching the conversation take place without a hint of subtlety. But there’s no reason to move just yet – a few words from Sophie to Lux at the end of the room, and then Lux stands up, claps his hands together to get everybody’s attention.

“Go to sleep, we’re running this tomorrow, and I’m not having you lot bugger it up by running it half-asleep.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took my irritation at the delay until 2020 and turned it into motivation. Still irritated, but irritated with more fic written.

There’s little left to do but watch as final preparations are made, fuses are checked, data read over. Carver and the Doctor work in silent unison, while the rest of them wait. Sophie and Charlie try to look busy, staring at sheets of paper; Lux shuffles through his cue cards that feature a hastily planned speech.

Should it all go as planned, they have a way of easing the people from the database back into the world, scripted in a panic that morning – but ready, waiting for confusion and disbelief. Yaz is a little proud, not that she’d admit it: she hasn’t done much in the way of grief counselling, but she’d done enough family liaison to be helpful in figuring out what to say to somebody suddenly displaced. It felt far more useful than dumbstruck silence, at any rate. Lux had immediately taken it upon himself to make the introductions – though Yaz is more than happy for that to be somebody else’s responsibility.

Should it all go as planned, that is. The last time people were pulled out of the database, the system had been far more stable, and it had facilitated by a massive surge of energy that nobody knew the source of. This time, they don’t have that energy, and the technology has been repaired around machines last used eighty years ago, and last maintained regularly significantly before that.

Yaz has never seen the Doctor look so nervous: staring down screens next to Carver, her lips are pressed together in a tight line, her shoulders tense. She’s seen the Doctor face off with murderers and aliens, intent on killing thousands; five lives hanging in the balance doesn’t even seem like the most confronting thing they’ve faced this week. And yet, the Doctor refuses to say why. She refuses to say much at all, not that that is a change in her behaviour since they landed – and that alone is enough to concern Yaz, as it has for days. A moment of peace with the Doctor is a rarity; three days of it are unfathomable. She suspects that the three days of silence are a side effect of sleep deprivation – alongside the nerves, the Doctor looks exhausted, even as she works.

She’d noticed the camp bed, still unfolded, when they walked into the room. Carver had suggested, and Charlie had reinforced, that the people shouldn’t experience any medical repercussions coming back into the world, if everything goes to plan. Graham and Ryan ignored them, and set it up anyway – the shock of lurching into the world eighty years after dying isn’t purely physical.

Carver and Charlie are both confident on no medical repercussions _if_ everything goes to plan. “The last time anything like this happened,” Charlie had insisted, “It was without system maintenance for a century, and people barely even wobbled as they came out of it. Time elapsing isn’t a medical issue, and we can work with that once we’re out of this planet.” Yaz doesn’t want to interject with how differently people can deal with trauma, not with how tense the room already is, and she just hopes that it goes according to plan. She doesn’t want to think about how easily something could go wrong, either.

The sound of cue cards shuffling is interrupted by a few short, sharp beeps, and Carver quietly announces, “We’re ready.”

And the room snaps into place. Lux centres himself, directly in front of the platform, a few metres away, cue cards in hand. Sophie and Charlie both push their papers aside, and stand, waiting; Carver and the Doctor stand by the desk, tense and alert. Yaz backs away, standing by one of the benches to the side of the room – out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ryan and Graham do the same.

Carver presses something that Yaz assumes is a button, not that she can see it – the machine beeps a few times, a soft hum begins to emanate from it, and it’s a full thirty seconds of nothing changing before a shock of light and a burst of electricity. And then a figure stands on the platform, a woman in plain black clothing, with a halo of curly blonde hair.

The Doctor immediately rushes forward to the woman, and stops short, a few feet from the platform – as though she’d been readying herself for that moment. She watches as the woman stares around the room, realising where she is, or possibly merely where she isn’t. Her eyes fall to the Doctor, but there’s no spark of recognition.

She steps off the platform – despite everything that had been said otherwise, Yaz still expected her to be unsteady, but she’s fine, and confident, and quickly seems to be taking her sudden reappearance remarkably well. That, or she’s just excellent at masking it. She comes to a halt in front of the Doctor, and something changes in her expression.

Lux jolts forward, as though to step between them, taking a deep breath to ready himself for the speech that everybody has seen him rehearsing under his breath. But Sophie jumps forth and grabs his arm, and gives him an imploring look. It seems that Yaz is not the only one that has noticed the sudden change in the Doctor’s demeanour – three days of icy hyperfocus, gone in an instant.

She’s not quite sure what’s happening, but she feels like she’s intruding on this moment between the woman and the Doctor anyway. But she doesn’t want to miss it.

And the room is silent, the air thick with nerves at the unexpected, and silent enough for them all to hear the Doctor say two words as her voice cracks: “Hello, sweetie.”

The woman’s whole expression shifts, and then she reaches for the Doctor’s face, and kisses her.

The Doctor relaxes, and leans in to the kiss, one hand on the woman’s waist, the other hanging frozen, almost unsure. Yaz glances away – she definitely feels like she’s intruding now, and can’t ignore the sudden weight in the pit of her stomach.

Ryan looks startled; Graham’s expression would mirror Ryan’s, were it not for the addition of the warm smile that he’s not even trying to hide.

It feels like an eternity stretching inside her head, even though it dawns on her that in reality, it’s only been a few seconds. The Doctor and the woman are still stood close, their foreheads pressed together. She can just hear the Doctor saying something, but she can’t quite make out the words themselves. The woman’s thumb brushes across the Doctor’s cheek, just under her eye, and Yaz realises that the Doctor must be crying.

The Doctor then leans up, and kisses the woman again – very lightly, and very quickly – before reaching for her hand, and leading her to a bench towards the back of the room.

Yaz forces her gaze back to the platform, and watches as Carver starts pressing buttons again, and Lux readies himself to give his speech this time. Everybody seems a little startled – but they press on, they aren’t finished yet.

An unwilling glance back, and she can see the Doctor and the woman sitting inseparably close, with the Doctor’s arm around the woman’s waist, and her forehead against the side of the woman’s face. They’re both sat with their eyes closed against the fluorescent glow of the room – Yaz doubts that either of them will be watching the next person be pulled out of the hard drive.

And then, the soft hum runs for far less time, and there’s another flash of light, another burst of electricity. A woman appears, wide-eyed against the light. Lux begins his speech – “My name is Rothman Lux, and you are in the Library…”

Yaz bites the inside of her cheek, to force herself away from distraction again, and to try to force herself not to think about the gnawing in the pit of her stomach.

\---

The woman was the first of five, and Yaz winds up with her arm around the last to come out – a woman who must be barely twenty years old and can’t stop her hands from trembling. The others had come out just as seamlessly as the first, sometimes worried, sometimes frighteningly professional.

Miss Evangelista, however, hadn’t said a word. It had been Sophie that checked her face against a photo, and who had taken that, without a word, as confirmation of her identity. Despite a room full of her colleagues, she hadn’t said a word to them, and they hadn’t said a word to her.

Yaz is merely baffled as to how the rest of them aren’t as confused. They were archaeologists, explorers, but they were contemporary to the time they vanished in. Three of them are talking to Lux – a woman called Anita, and two men called Dave, and Yaz hadn’t seen a twinge of regret at their sudden appearance in the next century.

Lux is starting to speak more quickly, gesticulating wildly, while Anita and the Daves have stopped speaking, instead stepping away, standing along the bench opposite from where Yaz is sitting with Miss Evangelista. Lux’s stress is palpable – he makes a beeline for Carver, and Yaz can’t help but feel sorry for him, even with her arm still around the still shaking Miss Evangelista. There’s thirty seconds of sharp, angry conversation, before Lux straightens his back, his shoulders arched.

And then he snaps at an affronted Carver, “Do it again!” The sudden noise catches the attention of everybody in the room – Yaz feels Miss Evangelista look up, and she catches movement in the corner of her eye, of the Doctor and the woman glancing up briefly, where they still sit, impossibly close to each other at the far end of the room.

“Sir, there were only five people listed missing – I don’t know what we’ll actually generate if we do this again. I don’t even know if the system can handle it.” Carver has pulled his glasses off, and pinches at the bridge of his nose.

At that, Charlie looks up, and quietly says, “Just do what he says.” It’s the first thing they’ve said since before the platform generated people out of thin air.

Lux’s anger, and the whispered argument, had had no effect on Carver – instead, at Charlie’s soft-spoken insistence, he places his glasses back on, and begins to silently tap away, until the hum and the electricity and the light return, feeling almost familiar by now.

After the burst of light fades, a little girl stands on the platform, with wide eyes and a deathly pallor. And Lux rushes forward – no longer wearing the mask of a professional, he kneels in front of her, whispering very gently to her.

She nods, once, twice, doesn’t say a word, and leans forward to hug him, albeit very cautiously.

Charlie is the only member of Lux’s team that doesn’t look confused – Sophie and Carver are staring at each other, eyes wide, a silent conversation passing between them. Meanwhile, Charlie has already pulled a bag out from where it had been hidden under a bench, the red cross on its side instantly recognisable, somehow in use thousands of years after its creation. They kneel to the girl’s eye level with the bag next to them, all the while talking quietly, gently, kindly.

Cautiously, Charlie checks over the little girl, checking her pulse, her breathing, her reactions. There was no medical equipment around beyond the small bag, but Charlie knows it inside out, their fingers skimming through it for equipment without even a glance. The little girl is incredibly compliant – she doesn’t stir at cold, sterile metal, and obediently lifts her hand for a pinprick blood test.

Yaz had wondered why the team’s alleged history expert had been going through boxes of files that would have been the first thing to be examined. All three of them had wondered about it – but with nobody volunteering information, and nobody around to ask, they’d been left to speculate in stolen moments. None of them would have guessed a surreptitious medic, going through slabs of files to fill in time and hide their purpose from half of their team.

Charlie turns to Lux, and their voice carries more strongly than the whispers that had been uttered for most of the time in the room. With everybody’s curiosity tangible, Yaz is not surprised to see everybody straining to listen. “She’ll need treatment, of course, but she’ll be fine to travel until then, as long as we move soon.”

At that, Lux picks up the little girl, holding her against his side. “Right then, Charlotte, looks like we’re getting you home.”

Yaz sees the Doctor and the woman watching – and then she catches the Doctor’s eye, and looks away, guilty, still feeling as though she’s intruding, the weight in her stomach coming back with a vengeance.

The Doctor looks away from Yaz to see the three of them still there, still a little dumbstruck, and looks as though she’s realised that they’re still there, for the first time in days. Despite everything else going on, they weren’t going to let this slide easily, but they wait for the Doctor to make the first move.  She’s been silent and distant for three days – the sudden shift to the hesitant smile, the unwillingness to even _look_ away from this woman, feels like whiplash, even when the feeling of near-desertion has yet to change.

The Doctor says something to the woman, tilts her head in the direction of where the three of them are still waiting. In that instant, Charlie sees Miss Evangelista, still terrified, and sits to her side, takes her hand to feel for her pulse that Yaz knows is still erratic. Yaz leaves them alone, and stands by Graham’s side, trying to keep the twitch of nerves to her toes, just hoping that she can keep from giving it away.

The woman says something, and the Doctor grins, warmer and wider than Yaz has ever seen. She springs out of her seat and grabs the woman’s hand, to lead her to the three of them.

Yaz glances at Ryan and Graham – Graham is watching the woman and the Doctor, but for a split second, she catches Ryan’s eye, and she knows that he can tell that she feels almost ill with it all, despite having never said a word about it to him. She’s never been as good as hiding her emotions as she had thought, or as she’d have liked. Anything she once succeeded in hiding onboard the ship is written plain on her face, where she knows that Ryan can read it.

And then the Doctor begins talking almost immediately, from only a couple of feet away, shattering Yaz’s runaway thoughts.

“River, this is Yaz, Graham, Ryan,” the Doctor says, pointing them out, left to right, where they’d lined themselves up, almost as though they were a front against some unknown force. And then she pauses, wary, steadies herself as she takes a breath, but there is still joy lighting up her features. “Team, this is River. She’s—she’s my wife.”

Of course the woman is River. Yaz would feel daft for not having thought of it, but she’d be lying to herself if she pretended that she hadn’t – she hates the small part of her that had hoped it wouldn’t be the case, that had refused to believe what she was seeing, from the moment she had appeared out of thin air. The little context she has, she knows she is alone in having; the Doctor even being married is a surprise that she’s not sure how the others are taking.

“Nice to meet you, River.” Graham reaches forward, grabs her hand in a two-handed handshake, shakes it warmly. But Yaz can tell that his mind is suddenly elsewhere – and she can tell that Ryan can see that, too. The Doctor knows so much about them, but she hadn’t even shared this much.

“Nice to meet you too, Graham, Ryan, Yaz” River says as she mirrors the movement, shaking Ryan and Yaz’s hands too, as though the echoing might make this a bit less strange. Two of them never knew this woman existed until now; Yaz just thought she was dead.

She knew that the Doctor had hoped there was some way out of this – death is fickle, when one has a time machine. She could save her wife, save five other people, but there were hundreds, thousands of deaths that she couldn’t stop. Or maybe that she just didn’t want to.

Yaz tries not to think about it, tries to focus on the conversation in front of her, on the sudden activity in a room not quite big enough for over a dozen people. Tries to focus on the fact that six people were just saved, tries not to think about the fact that one of them is the Doctor’s _wife_.

\---

The room is left as it is, no effort made to bring anything with them, to take it back to the planet they came from. Charlie has taken over from Yaz in talking to Miss Evangelista, who has finally started to talk, though her own archaeological team is still ignoring her.

They still trail along after the Doctor, like they always do, but it’s impossible to ignore that something has shifted. It’s palpable in the silence – they’re tired, they’re a little overwhelmed, there’s no reason for them to be talking, but Yaz still feels like they’re owed some sort of explanation.

No efforts are made with the main room, papers still strewn around the boxes, camp beds still in the corner. Sophie immediately reaches for a box, one that hadn’t been opened in their days of reading – she pulls out a clipboard, glances around the room, and makes a few notes on it. Then she reaches inside for a smaller box, but rather than slightly dishevelled cardboard, this one is black, made of a smooth metal, and held together by a clasp.

Inside, there is a set of spatial manipulators, identical to the ones the team had worn the entire time. Compact, frighteningly unprotected, but efficient. Five people lost on the official manifest, but the box contained six. Charlotte had been the mission all along.

Not that she seems to know it, just yet. Lux is still holding her, gently explaining the technology around them that must not have existed when she was saved in the database.

The rest of the team are attaching their own spatial manipulators, but when Sophie offers one to River, she turns it down. “I have my own way out of here,” she says without a second thought, gesturing towards the Doctor.

Sophie is less relaxed. “We need to debrief you still, check for any medical issues—”

“I’ll be fine, always am. And you’ve got Charlotte out, isn’t that the whole reason you’re here?” Sophie goes to protest, but River doesn’t let her, instead continuing. “I’d trust this woman with my life. We’ll be fine, you’ll all be fine, and I know that everybody else can tell you what happened in there.”

Lux cuts loudly into the conversation, before either River or Sophie gets a chance to continue. “So isn’t it going to be even more cramped in that ridiculous blue box of hers?”

He doesn’t notice the eyes of the archaeological team grow wide, as they all glance, none too subtly, at the Doctor.

River grins. “You’d be surprised.” It’s settled, then, not that Yaz would have expected otherwise.

“Right, you’d better be off, we need to go.” Lux gives them no say in the matter, rushing them out, but it’s hardly a surprise, as Charlotte already looks paler than when she appeared. He starts ushering them towards the stairs, after handing Charlotte to a startled Carver.

River cautiously nods at the archaeological team, and tells them, “I’ll see you around.” Yaz swears that it doesn’t sound genuine – no hugs, not even handshakes or a step closer, for the people she had died with. She’d had more affection for the other probationary officers after six weeks of training. And then, they’re rushed out the door – the last thing Yaz notices is Charlie still speaking to Miss Evangelista, seemingly trying to reassure her.

Down the stairs, to the room with the broken, intricate computer, and the TARDIS waiting for them. The Doctor leads the way; Lux follows them, last of all, refusing to let them change their minds, despite having made their decision for them.

River’s eyes go wide as they walk into the room with the TARDIS, and Yaz sees her stiffen. The Doctor notices too – she brings her hand to brush against River’s back, and stands a little closer, but she doesn’t say a word.

Lux watches them, clearly waiting to see them leave. He eyes the Doctor carefully, and nods at her; she stares back, and does nothing, but the TARDIS doors open softly, without hesitation.

And then she steps in first, closely followed by River; the rest of them follow quickly, leaving Lux alone, still watching. The Doctor is clearly so focused on River and leaving that there is that shared, unconscious thought between the three of them, that they don’t want to get left behind. They wave, briefly, at Lux, before closing the door, but he doesn’t react, instead looking stunned at them all walking into the seemingly small space so comfortably.

The Doctor and River are standing by the console – River runs her fingers lightly over the buttons, then taps at the small glass TARDIS and smirks. The Doctor leans heavily against the console, and watches her all the while.

It’s still functionally morning for them – saving six people seemed to take hardly any time at all – but the time in the Library has been taxing nonetheless. Even had it not been, Yaz still feels like she’s intruding on something, and she knows she’s not the only one. At the sound of the engines wheezing away, Graham says to nobody in particular, “I think I might go lie down for a bit. Sleep in a proper bed and all that.”

Ryan follows him down the passage with a “Yeah, me too,” and barely a wave. The Doctor doesn’t respond – but there would have been no point, neither of them stayed long enough to hear.

Yaz looks at them – the Doctor and River, the Doctor and _her wife_ – and knows that she is neither necessary nor wanted, not in that moment. “I’m gonna—yeah.” She gestures vaguely down the hallway that Graham and Ryan left by, not giving them time to respond. Turns quickly, to ignore whatever response she gets – or doesn’t – from the Doctor.

And then she leaves them alone in the console room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Bee for your proofreading!
> 
> And I realise that this chapter took a little longer than you may have expected - it took longer than I expected, too. Oh well, life has calmed down for the moment, and as it's up before Resolution airs, I won't need to do any last minute rewrites.

The latest team aboard the TARDIS scatter as soon as it takes off – River doesn’t believe for a moment that they’re as tired as they claim.

The Doctor, on the other hand, is definitely far more exhausted than she is letting on, even as she relaxes a little – they’re finally alone together, so the façade is dropped somewhat. She’s swaying a little as she leans against the console, staring far too intently at a display that clearly says that the TARDIS is stable, floating idly in the time vortex.

The control room is dark, which can’t be helping. A series of crystals surrounding the console bathe their immediate vicinities in a soft glow, the console itself lit up warmly, but the concentrated light throws the rest of the room into darkness, so much so that River has to focus to see where the room now ends.

But she’s still in the TARDIS – still home. For the first time in too long, she’s not trapped in an image of a pseudo-English country manor, warped by three thousand years of history, with no end in sight. Instead, she’s alone with the Doctor. Alone with her wife.

Her _wife_. She’s still getting used to the phrase.

And now, she wants to run into the universe again, taste real fresh air, see the history that she missed, trapped in stasis – things she never thought she’d miss so much, things she didn’t even miss in Stormcage. More than that, she wants to sweep the Doctor into her arms, kiss her until they’re both breathless and dizzy, and not stop even then.

Though if she is aiming for dizziness on the part of the Doctor, she doubts it would take very long right now.

So instead, she stands behind the Doctor, arms around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder. She’s always known the Doctor to be at least a few inches taller than her, even when she wore heels; now, she is just slightly shorter than her, and River notes, with a touch of delight, how easily she can kiss her cheek, her neck. Delightful, yes, but disorienting, and she isn’t sure how long it’ll take her to get used to this.

She can see the reflection of the Doctor’s face, blurred against the image of the idling TARDIS, momentarily affronted at the fact that she is now the short one. But then she leans back into the hug, and stays, for a moment, before finding River’s hand with her own. And then she intertwines their fingers, lifts their joined hands, and presses a soft kiss to River’s knuckles, holding their conjoined hands against her lips for a moment more, before dropping them.

River lets her lead her into the passageways of the TARDIS.

\---

They don’t go to bed, to River’s surprise; instead, the Doctor leads her to the library.

River isn’t sure that she wants to spend any time in a library again quite so soon, but there has always been something quite homey about this one, with its soft, warm lights, and the overwhelming familiarity. So much has changed in the ship – but there is still a fire crackling, with soft couches in front of it; it even still smells the same as it once did, however long ago that once was. She can’t quite trust her judgement; her time in a non-reality feels like decades and mere moments all at once, but her time in the TARDIS just feels too much out of reach. And anyway, however long it has been for her, it’s been a completely different time for the TARDIS.

Even the parts that aren’t quite familiar still somehow feel it. The chairs are a deep crimson, rather than the midnight green leather they once were, but there are still haphazard stacks of books surrounding them, with one stack having toppled across the floor. The coasters are new, but clearly optional, an empty mug placed almost deliberately next to one.

The Doctor, too, is still the same Doctor that she fell in love with, a lifetime ago. Regeneration changes many things, but there is no doubt that this is the person she fell in love with – still impulsive, with a hero complex and no sense of self-preservation, but who still knows her better than anybody else, and who still loves her despite that.

River shakes herself out of her reflection, and catches her wife’s gaze. She’s standing by the couch, watching her, still looking as though she thinks she’s dreaming. The look of disbelief hasn’t faded from her face – a look that has been there since River first fell back into this universe, before she ever realised that she last saw this woman as her husband who was too young to know her.

But exhaustion has crept onto her face. She’s been fading out of most of the conversations that were had, and by the time they got to the TARDIS, she was barely speaking, barely registering what was happening around her. It’s rare to see the Doctor this exhausted – it’s something that only days without sleep would cause.

The light of the fire brings the Doctor’s face into sharp relief. The line of her cheekbones and her jaw, the shadows under her eyes. The curve of her lips, as they sit slightly parted, as she looks River in the eye.

And River can’t wait any longer.

She grabs the Doctor’s hands, pulls her close, and then they all but fall onto the couch together, and River kisses the Doctor properly, without the hesitation brought on by an unexpected reunion, without the vague sense of decorum brought on by an audience – the Doctor’s everlasting sense of decorum, not her own.

It’s as if nothing had changed. The years since their last kiss dissolve in her mind, the Doctor’s habit of new faces irrelevant. Just River, and the Time Lord she married, alone and together in the TARDIS, as it should be.

She feels the Doctor’s fingers tangle themselves in the hair at the nape of her neck - she can’t pull away, not that she’d ever want to. And then, as though startled, the Doctor breaks the kiss.

She doesn’t lean away, though, staying close. She stares into River’s eyes, the corners of her own eyes lifting as the full force of a smile stretches across her face.

And then she looks away, very suddenly, and buries a yawn in her hands. She looks up after her rather extended yawn, apologetic – but it’s not as if River is going to take offense, she knows how enthusiastic the Doctor usually is about snogging her, and how enthusiastic she has been already, despite the shorter-than-expected duration.

So she reaches around the Doctor, and pulls her close, before laying back into the couch, giving her no chance to protest, and no choice but to lie down too, held fast between River’s side and the back of the couch.

She does try to protest, though – a soft “ _Oi!_ ” that lacks the emphasis she probably wanted. Her resistance is also undercut by the fact that she almost immediately cuddles into River, and then reaches for her hand, intertwining their fingers and resting their joined hands against River’s sternum.

After a few seconds of silence, the Doctor tightens her fingers against River’s, and asks, “Are you going to miss it in there?”

River stares at the ceiling, head against the arm of the couch, carefully considering her words. She’s glad for the fact that she’s lying down – the memory of being left in there still stings, even though it is just a memory now, and she’s not sure she can look the Doctor in the eye as she says it. “There’s nothing _to_ miss. It was the same thing, day in, day out. You said it was eighty years, but you could have said a year or a thousand, it wouldn’t make a difference. Time went on, like it was supposed to, but nothing happened. Nothing changed. Nobody changed, either.”

Surviving the Library – in a very loose sense – and realising that she was not the only one to do so, it had been a shock, a relief, all at once in a rush of bright light and a burst of energy. But then the realisation that these strangers, colleagues she barely knew, were her only company besides a handful of children, born of nothing, foisted on her as though it was all that was expected of her. Nothing could have prepared her for how strange they were to her, until the endless nothingness made it stand out that she would rather have languished in there alone. She’d seen civilisations rise and fall, she’d travelled and studied the length and breadth of the universe, and suddenly she was stuck, in the mundanity of a normal life, with the mundanity of normal people, for whom an archaeological expedition had been the exception, not the rule. Day in, day out, the conversations became the same, the days themselves became the same. Until that rush of light, that burst of energy, and it wasn’t the same, finally.

One day, they might have that conversation, beyond the very surface of it, but not with their reunion itself so fresh, and with the Doctor nearly asleep. She’ll remember the conversation later, of course, but she won’t have said what she wanted, and River can’t quite tell how this Doctor will react to that.

She doesn’t know how many years it has been since the Doctor’s version of Darillium. She barely knows this Doctor at all.

Not that she can bring herself to think about that, not yet, not now.

The Doctor lets go of River’s hand, and brings her own up to brush against River’s cheek, gently stroking with her thumb. As she does, she presses her face into her neck, as close as she can possibly get. And then, softly, “I’m sorry.”

River pulls her closer, with the arm around her lower back, and rubs her hand over her wife’s waist. “I know.”

Still softly, still against River’s neck, the Doctor continues, her words barely discernible as they blur into each other. “Didn’t know that’s what it was like in there, didn’t think, Donna told me after what it was like, but it seemed okay. But I didn’t know you, ‘nd it seemed like it might have been better, better than dying, anyway.” Her hand stops still against River’s cheek, and she takes a deep breath. “If I’d known, I don’t know if I would’ve.”

River doesn’t know how to respond to that, doesn’t know how to approach a reality she had once resigned herself to. There would be time to talk – all the time in the universe. Everything else she wants to say feels like it can wait – until they can look each other in the eye, and until they’re both awake enough to recall the conversation without regrets.

And then, somehow even softer, the Doctor murmurs, “I’ve missed you.” River barely hears the words as the Doctor mumbles into her neck. And then, she feels the Doctor relax, her hand falling against River’s shoulder, and she hears her sigh, feels the air rush against her neck.

With the Doctor falling asleep against her, River lets her eyes drift shut too, just for a moment.

\---

She’s in that happy medium of not-quite-asleep when soft footsteps approach the fireplace, but there’s little more that River can do to acknowledge them beyond look up.

The young woman looks surprised to see them there, and a little embarrassed. River doubts that she was looking for company – she’s swapped her jacket for a soft dressing gown, and is holding an old hardcover book, the title long worn off.

River speaks quietly, even though she knows the Doctor won’t wake up. “You’re Yaz, right?” She knows, but the woman has barely said a word since they met, and River would rather not make the conversation any more stilted than it needs to be.

“Yasmin, yeah.”

“Nice to meet you then, Yasmin.” She makes no move to sit up, to look Yasmin in the eye, locked into place by her sleeping wife; all she can do is tilt her head a little, to look at Yasmin slightly more directly.

Not that she returns the look – instead, she stares at the sleeping Doctor, and bites her lip. “I don’t think she’s actually slept properly since we got to the Library.” Concern catches in her throat.

“That sounds about right.” River runs her fingers through the Doctor’s hair – it’s soft, softer than it looks, and longer than she’s ever seen it. She wonders if the Doctor started dyeing it – which doesn’t seem like something she’d do, despite appearances.

Yasmin doesn’t say anything, but she lowers herself carefully onto the edge of an armchair, perching with the book held against her knees. River is surprised she didn’t leave, given her obvious aim of being alone.

But she knows the look in Yasmin’s eyes instantly, and the way she’s holding herself with far too much awareness of her own posture. She can tell, quite clearly, how uncomfortable she is to be all but alone with her.

She knows the look of somebody in love with the Doctor, realising who River is, realising what it means for them. She knows what it is, to be enamoured with somebody who travels to the ends of the universe. She also remembers – acutely recently – what it is to look that person in the eye and not have them reciprocate the feeling.

It’s strange, to go from an incredibly young man who saw her as a stranger, to a woman who has seen their entire history, and who didn’t seem to believe it was possible for them to have a future together. She’d thought her time with her husband was over; she never would have thought she’d see it continued, timeline running in tandem with her wife.

She’s not quite sure what Yasmin knows of that history. The Doctor doesn’t even know some of it – faces from long ago that had no say in forgetting her, so that instead, she would one day meet a stranger when she was expecting her husband, and know that it was her time. Temporarily, anyway.

Yasmin scratches her nails against the spine of her book as she tenses a little, before she speaks again, breaking the silence. “How long have you two been married?”

“Uhm…” River tries to run through the numbers in her head, but it’s always a little murky when time travel comes into play. She has nothing more exact than the twenty-four years on Darillium, and she knows that those twenty-four years are but a small fraction of it. “A while.”

“A while?”

“It gets hard to keep track after the first few decades.”

“Oh.” Yasmin’s posture eases a little, and she leans back in the chair somewhat – not relaxed, not entirely, but some of her tenseness is lost, as though resigned.

And then, River gently asks, “How old are you, Yasmin?” She’s probably not the youngest of the companions and friends and stowaways who have wound up on board the TARDIS, but River has never been good at guessing ages. But Yasmin is so much the Doctor’s type – young and pretty, and probably idealistic and a little naïve, as they so often are. It has always worried her, how young they are.

“Nineteen—well, twenty by now, probably.” Her brow furrows a little. “I don’t know how I’d actually keep track of that.”

River catches her eye, and smiles. “You don’t.” She has a vague idea of how many centuries she’s been alive, and that’s it. Meanwhile, Yasmin is probably still tracking it nearly to the day, in a futile attempt to know for certain, that River only hopes she will live long enough to have the chance to abandon. It’s a sudden thought, but not entirely unjustified, given the fates of far too many friends of the Doctor.

Yasmin looks away, and stares into the fire, biting at her lip again. She’s clearly deep in thought – and has been so for a while, since long before River stumbled back into this universe.

River can tell that there are questions buzzing around Yasmin’s mind – she’s concentrating far too hard on the flames, and doing a poor job of hiding her glances up, towards where River is watching her, to where the Doctor lies asleep.

At least she seems well aware of the feelings that are painted across her face.

It’s nearly silent, their conversation barely having begun before it ended again. Yasmin doesn’t seem to have anything to say, and River doesn’t want to say anything to push the girl away – if the Doctor keeps her around, there is surely a reason for it. Maybe she just still enjoys being fawned over. Beneath their mutual silence, the crackle of the fire, and the soft rise and fall of the Doctor’s breath, River is hyperaware of the gentle hum of the engines of the TARDIS, for the first time in too long.

The look still across Yasmin’s face stands out in the silence, too. She stares at the Doctor as though she’s an enigma and a deity all in one, rather than someone with a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and an aversion to using a laundry basket. And then, back to the flames, chewing at the inside of her cheek, as though it’s the only thing holding back the thoughts unsaid, as though she had never been caught staring.

Suddenly, the Doctor’s breathing hitches, and River is sure for a moment that she’s waking up. But she doesn’t – she stretches her arm out, across River’s chest, and nuzzles a little closer to her neck, sighing contentedly. And then, back to her soft breathing, not even a hint of a snore that River was used to, when she had last shared a bed with her husband.

Yasmin stares into the fire, very deliberately. Her posture stiffens again – as though bracing herself into silence, or preparing to leave. At a sudden, soft snort from the Doctor, she freezes.

River feels the Doctor stir, as though she had startled herself somewhat awake. Her head shifts, tilting up a little, and River can see her eyes darting over her face, as she clings a little closer.

River is still far too aware of Yasmin sitting nearby, which would be fine, had she not been able to read the girl’s face from very early on. She barely knows the girl, barely knows about her friendship with the Doctor, but she knows that the Doctor is typically good at picking the people to stick around, and she trusts the Doctor’s judgement on that, even if she doesn’t yet have a reason to. Whatever their relationship is, she doesn’t want to meddle – at least, not yet.

She doubts she has anything to be worried about, anyway. Even with her own sudden presence, she doubts that Yasmin would want to leave, or that she would want to be separated from the Doctor for any length of time. The Doctor has a knack for finding people like that, but rather less of a knack for having it end well.

Maybe meddling might be better for Yasmin in the long run.

Especially given that with the Doctor waking up, she is still completely frozen in her seat.

The Doctor doesn’t seem to have noticed Yasmin just yet – instead, she’s running her hand over River’s shoulder, gently touching at the ends of her hair.

River is definitely not letting them stay there any longer – her neck is starting to get stiff, and she’d like to lie down in an actual bed, regardless of whether or not she’ll actually sleep. “I should probably get you to bed.”

The Doctor glances up, smirking. “Been a while since I’ve heard you say that.” She doesn’t move to get up, though, instead snuggling herself a little closer to River again.

“We have company,” River says, gesturing as much as she can in Yasmin’s direction, to no avail – the Doctor seems intent on going back to sleep, exactly where she is.

Rather than letting her go back to sleep, River sits up, bringing the Doctor with her – with ruffled hair and bleary eyes and protestations at the movement.

And then she actually sees Yasmin sitting there, still looking intensely uncomfortable. “Oh, hiya, Yaz, thought you were going to try and get some rest?”

“Thought I’d read for a bit instead.” She taps at the book still on her lap, where it sits, still unopened.

The Doctor leans into River’s side, watching Yasmin, and River can hear the smile in her voice. “Oh, brilliant, is it still the one we got from that marketplace with all the books from the thousandth anniversary of the British Library?”

It’s the first time River has seen Yasmin smile without it looking pained. “Yeah, I’m nearly done.”

River takes it as an opportunity to interject. “We’ll leave you to it again, before _somebody_ falls asleep again.”

At that, the Doctor sits upright, and pouts. “I’m fine!”

River just looks her in the eye and rolls her eyes, at which the Doctor pouts more. She gently pushes at the small of the Doctor’s back, forcing her to stand upright. Her shoulders slouch as soon as she’s up – she can deny being tired all she wants, but River can see straight through that particular lie.

The Doctor begins to move, making her way past the chair in which Yasmin is sat. As she passes, she rests her hand briefly on the girl’s shoulder. “Night, Yaz,” the Doctor says, her tone lilting as she smiles broadly.

Yasmin looks up, softly replies, “Goodnight.” She smiles back, but the warmth fades from it almost instantly, and she can’t bring herself to quite make eye contact as the Doctor lifts her hand away. She curls back into the armchair, her knees close to her chest, and her book now by her side, all but forgotten.

The Doctor doesn’t quite seem to notice, the smile not waning. River can’t help but wonder whether it’s exhaustion or obliviousness.

Another conversation for another time.

At the door that leads them back into the endless hallways, River realises she isn’t quite sure where her wife’s bedroom is any more.

\---

The bedroom isn’t far from the library – down a dimly lit corridor, the smattering of lights glowing in the same way as those in the console room. Soft, warm, but not quite bright enough. But it’s still home.

The room itself is startlingly similar to how it has always been – the ceiling and walls blurring into one, an ever-changing haze of constellations stretching across both. The last time she had been here, it had been the stars mimicking those from the evening of their wedding; tonight, it’s constellations from Darillium. There’s one that had always been the Doctor’s favourite, shining from directly above the pillows.

The bed is unmade, but she has never known the Doctor to make a bed of a morning. A set of pyjamas is thrown across the foot of the bed – not folded, but not inside out, so not the messiest the Doctor has ever been. River swears that she’s seen them before, though they weren’t quite so faded then, the monkeys and bananas now somewhat subtler against the grey flannelette than they once were.

The Doctor looks at River, blinking a little too rapidly. Her lips part, but no words come out, and she frowns, seemingly trying to place her already-lost thoughts. Her façade of being wide awake has faded remarkably quickly.

“When you’re ready, sweetie.” River smiles, and the Doctor mirrors it, despite her mock indignation.

“I think there’s a…” the Doctor trails off, having already lost the words again, and she presses her lips together in an irritated silence as she gestures vaguely towards the cupboard. She steps backwards, and stumbles a little before spinning to throw the doors open, where she then kneels in front of the set of drawers inside. The cupboard is as River expected – more striped shirts than strictly necessary, thrown onto hangers haphazardly, and a pile of undershirts that don’t appear to even be aware of the concept of folding, instead thrown together in a ball. The top shelf is somehow even messier, a blur of oddments that likely spans centuries – but a rainbow scarf is hanging out, and there is a fez, looking far too new and far too intact for River’s liking.

The Doctor finds, in the back of the third drawer down, a set of neatly folded satin pyjamas, in a deep burgundy. River remembers them clearly – she’s hardly surprised they’re the pair the Doctor had tucked away, rather than something shorter and designed with activities besides sleep in mind. Sentimentality has always won out over any other alternative.

She looks far too proud as she hands them to River, though whether it’s pride at having kept them or pride at having found them, River isn’t quite sure. River would have happily foregone the pyjamas altogether, but the Doctor’s expression has her thinking otherwise.

Without moving from her position on the floor, she drops the suspenders from her shoulders, and pulls her shirt and undershirt off in what was clearly intended to be one motion, a less-than-smooth twist of her arms from the front. River is impressed that she isn’t undressing the way she has been for millennia – she wonders, not for the first time, how new this body actually is.

The Doctor balls up the shirts, leaves them next to her, and only then seems to realise that her pyjamas are across the room, and that River is definitely enjoying the view. “Bit different, this time round,” she says, glancing down briefly at her half-dressed body, before taking far too much effort to stand up.

River steps forward to meet her, with her hands on the bare skin of her wife’s waist, making the most of the feeling of skin against skin. “I like this one.”

She’s not sure how she expects the Doctor to react, but she’s pulled into an impossibly tight hug, the Doctor’s fingers grasping at her shirt and digging into her back.

Right against River’s ear, she can feel the Doctor murmuring, feel the air brushing against her neck. “It still doesn’t feel like you’re really here.”

River can’t help but think the same thing, even if she can’t bring herself to say it. Instead, she holds the Doctor closer, brushes her fingers against her spine until she shivers.

As much as she’d like to stay there, there is a bed right by them that she is looking forward to spending a lot of time with the Doctor in, so she lets go.

The Doctor is as graceful as she has ever been as she strips, dropping clothing to the floor and leaving it where it lands. River doesn’t even pretend not to be watching – she has every intention of getting to know this Doctor particularly well, in every sense that she can.

The Doctor’s pyjamas are far too big on her, the sleeves reaching her fingertips, and the trousers far too loose in the waist. River has never known the Doctor to actually seek out new clothing beyond the necessary, so the fact that they aren’t threadbare is an achievement, despite the fit.

Not that River gets a good look at them, as the Doctor swiftly crawls into bed, and drags the blankets up from the pile at the end, pulling them tightly around herself.

Only once the Doctor is settled does River change into her own pyjamas, aware that she is putting on a bit of a show for the Doctor – she catches her eye and winks, smirks a little, and overexaggerates the wiggle of her hips, at which she sees her stifle a giggle.

She can’t see much of the Doctor – just her face, peeking out from within a pile of blankets, glowing with warmth and a soft, sleepy smile, at which River can feel herself falling in love anew. She’s missed that, and it makes her chest ache, the feeling of falling in love again, with every moment that she spends with the Doctor.

As soon as she lays down next to the Doctor, the blankets are thrown over her, and the Doctor snuggles in, close to her side.

“I used to be fine at this, used to stay up all the time.” It’s barely a whisper, barely inches away from River.

River has never known the Doctor to stay awake for more than about forty-eight hours without things going downhill, fast, but now isn’t the time to bring that up. Instead, she smirks, and says, “You’re getting old, sweetie.” She’s enjoying having the pet name on her tongue again far too much.

The Doctor pouts, but seems to concede defeat, especially when River leans to cover the little distance between them, kissing her lightly. At that, she curls into River’s side, eyes already closed.

River didn’t think she was tired, either, but in the fading light of the room, she finds herself nodding off. She’s not quite sure that she isn’t dreaming when she hears the Doctor mumble, almost incomprehensibly, “I love you.”

\---

The Doctor wakes to the hum of the TARDIS and the soft breathing of her wife still asleep beside her. She doesn’t know how long she slept for – longer than usual, and far more soundly than she has for a while.

As the fog of sleep fades in her mind, she realises something else.

She didn’t dream at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading - your support has been a great motivation, and it means a lot to know that people are actually reading what I write!
> 
> Now, let's survive this hiatus...


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